The Sixth Station(80)
“I was shown a holograph too—or I know this sounds crazy, it might have been a, ah, a vision.”
“A vision or a holograph—which was it?”
“Does it matter right now?” She has some bug up her rear. Dammit, lady.
“Alessandra? You need to find Pantera. I believe he’s still alive.”
“The World Cou—”
The phone then made the ominous “you’re out of time, lady” beep and went dead. How would I find this Yusef Pantera guy if the frigging World Court had declared him just—was it four days ago; who knew anymore?—dead in a plane crash. Talk about deep undercover.
“Excuse me, Mr. Cesur; do you have a cell I can borrow?”
He handed me his cell phone and told me I could charge my phone in the backseat lighter.
Thank God it’s Turkey, where everyone still smokes for a living!
It immediately lit up. I tried calling her back but couldn’t make a connection, and so I left it free, hoping Maureen would call back. Good luck with that.
I dialed up Sadowski’s voice mail from Cesur’s phone.
Two calls. First one Donald. “I hope you are off the grid and don’t get this, but in case you are foolish enough to check in, I got a bead on Wilson—the doorman you asked about? Well, I had a bead on him. But someone put a bullet in his brain. Last night. I went to the building where the old fella still worked—but I ended up photographing a crime scene. No witnesses, no suspects. Everybody loved him and all that crap.” Click.
One from Dona: “Interpol is on your ass. My contact at the Feds said they’ve traced you to Istanbul. Get out.” Click. The call had come in six hours earlier. Shit.
Airport it was then. “Mr. Cesur, take me to the commercial airport, please.”
He just turned around and smiled.
What the hell did that mean?
The route was fairly well lit. We drove down the long gravel path, and fifty yards on the left there was a two-lane road, which we entered. We drove past a tiny mosque, then a long promenade of mulberry trees surrounding an excavation site at the Temple of Artemis.
Where could I possibly hope to find this Pantera guy?
I opened Sadowski’s phone, still connected to the plug, hit a tab that disconnected the connection, and scrolled through his contacts.
You never know—right?
I typed every iteration and spelling that I could think of for “Yusef Pantera”—“Yusef,” “Pantera,” all the Ps, all the Ys, and finally “YPanY” and found “Y, Pan, Y, Carcassonne + 33 4 68 88 98 71.” Could that possibly be him? With Sadowski, who the hell knew?
I checked Cesur’s map icon on his phone to put in “Carcassonne.” It was a city located in the Midi-Pyrénées in France and was tagged “eleventh-century, walled city.” The closest city with a large airport, however, seemed to be Barcelona, Spain. Air France seemed my best bet, after checking schedules.
“Air France, please, Mr. Cesur.”
He didn’t acknowledge what I’d said as I handed him back his phone, but I heard him call the airport, or so I hoped. He was speaking Turkish.
When we reached the airport junction, he turned the car left and headed toward the lower end of the Valley of the Ruins. Boy, did I belong there! I was surprised he didn’t take the right. There was a sign pointing to the TURKISH AVIATION CLUB, written in English and Turkish. I remember that sign when we drove out of the airport and passed the commercial airport. He was driving past it!
“Mr. Cesur, please. You passed the airport!”
He just kept driving—not acknowledging me at all. We came to road signs that pointed to Kusadasi to the left and the airports to the right.
He turned right and we passed what looked like the summer homes of the rich, visible through a forest of blackened pine trees.
“Miss, this forested area was destroyed by fire—the drought, you see.”
He sped up as we passed small village after small village, with greenhouses blending into each other, then farmland, then the Tahtali Dam and a drought-dried lake bed.
“Please, sir, where are you taking me?”
He broke his silence on the subject just to say, “It’s all good, miss, all good.” He was going too fast for me to attempt to jump out.
After another ten minutes at a steady 45 mph we reached the big public airport, but Cesur continued driving straight on past the passenger terminals and toward the private area where thirty or so private planes—from antique biplanes to sleek Learjets—stood idly by.
“No check-in, miss, no check-in,” he said as we pulled up to the same Gulfstream jet on which we’d come. Turkish police and security were swarming the field.